


The Hunt

by tiger_moran



Series: Lyric [4]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Brief references to homophobia, Don't copy to another site, London, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27326305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiger_moran/pseuds/tiger_moran
Summary: Fourth in a collection of standalone but also interconnected Moriarty and Moran fics inspired by lyrics from songs, particularly pop/rock songs.
Relationships: Sebastian Moran/James Moriarty
Series: Lyric [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1992709
Kudos: 6





	The Hunt

**Author's Note:**

> Ruelle – The Hunt
> 
> We live in shadows  
> We live where darkness hides  
> We'll go where no one goes

The Professor and the Colonel, they live in the shadow city, the underworld beneath the London that is respectable and wealthy and (mostly) law-abiding. Oh they keep a foot in that grand city too, with the residence in Conduit Street; with their clothing that comes only from excellent tailors; with Moriarty's jobs tutoring the aristocratic brats in mathematics. Really though, they straddle the line that marks and divides the proper from the improper, and they are hardly averse to crossing it or even erasing it entirely at times.

London, like them, has many faces. There is the City proper, and everything radiating out beyond that centre. There are the wealthy areas, the downtrodden areas, the slums, and often the now poor areas were not so long ago far more grand; once these vast houses now divided and subdivided and perhaps subdivided again and packed with people were large spacious residences, home to the London elite, and not so long ago either many of these crowded streets and courts and tenements were open fields, until London devoured them, consumed the open spaces, filling them with more buildings, and more shadows, because this city is not static; it is always in flux, in constant motion, and it is always hungry.

There are places populated only by the most wealthy of white men and places filled with people from China, India, the Caribbean, and other far-flung places. There are the still grand houses and vast shops bearing a wide array of fancy wares often standing shoulder to shoulder with tawdry gin palaces or brothels or something equally disreputable. There are bankers and civil servants and flower sellers and prostitutes and sailors and slaughterhouse-workers and politicians and shop-girls and many others crowded into this rather small space. Moran, more ably than most, moves between these people, blending, merging, changing his accent sometimes, or sometimes his posture or his mannerisms, moving unnoticed until he wants to be noticed, venturing into places where often even the police fear to tread. He knows better than most where London's deepest darkest shadows lie, and how to move between them without being seen, slipping silently from the light into the dark and back again, and he does not fear the darkness; he embraces it, for this urban jungle is just as much his hunting ground as the verdant forests of India ever were.

As criminals then, ones who have routinely been involved with thefts, forgeries, the occasional murder, and also as - as many would dub them - 'inverts', even when in their nice house in a respectable area, Moriarty and Moran still live primarily in the shadows.


End file.
